It’s almost hard to believe another decade has come and gone, but as they say, such is life. So rather than moan and groan about getting older and the days passing us by, we want to take a few minutes to recognize all the remarkable films we’ve had the pleasure of watching over the past ten years, and there were a lot.
The previous decade introduced us to instant classics like The Dark Knight, Gladiator, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Still, if I may be so bold while composing our list of the must-see movies from 2010-2019, it became apparent that we may have just witnessed one of the most extraordinary 10-year spans in cinematic history.
With that in mind, from Guardians of the Galaxy to The Lighthouse, join us as we countdown 20 must-see movies of the 2010s. Enjoy!
20. Arrival (2016)
The most cerebral and best executed alien invasion movie since Stephen Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Arrival, made believers out of us again. After some genre disappointments in recent years, Arrival delivered a thinking man’s sci-fi movie that was exciting, involving, and intelligent all at once. And, like Close Encounters, the film succeeds by answering the question: How would we react if alien spacecraft showed up on Earth?
Arrival rightly focuses on the fact that our priority would be to try to communicate with the aliens and understand one another. Actors Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner are high in the movie, but director Denis Villeneuve deserves a lot of credit for his handling of the sci-fi source material. The up-and-coming director had quite the decade, helming several critically acclaimed films, most notably Blade Runner 2049 and Prisoners. In 2020, Villeneuve is set to direct Dune, a new two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel of the same name.
Source: Screenshot via Paramount Pictures/Sony Pictures